


I can't stay (in case I read your inner page)

by winterysomnium



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re all out of hunger, out of crime, out of their script. Shells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can't stay (in case I read your inner page)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a lyric from the song "Not That Big" by Temposhark. (The same song that inspired this.)

Bruce used to see stories between Tim’s lanky shoulders, on the roof of his hips, the concave angle of the back of his milky knees; used to suck on the ink and wear the lipstick of Tim’s skin, lick his lips until they got dry in the cold, until he couldn’t taste Tim anymore.

Icy nights with blue, wet ghosts of lights and heavy, thick smoke is what they inhaled, what they gave when it was there to share as they dozed to the fire within their ribs; something Bruce knew the count of.

The ground, the hills and valleys of Tim’s belly look empty, look lost every time he lifts his shirt, when he undresses to sleep, when he dresses to stay awake. Look misplaced by Bruce’s mouth; his teeth the ones that dig the patch of skin out, his lips the bowl, mouth the machine, he plows and relocates and cuts a puzzle he keeps disassembling; it’s a forgotten Rubik cube.

It’s _wrong_ when Bruce’s fingers still at the outside of Tim’s opened fly, flick the button, rough chin a hurt for his tongue to heal; it’s shallow because he’s distracted, weak where Tim presses, tips of fingers to tips of hair, shells of ears to the shell of bones, they’re all talked out. 

They’re all out of hunger, out of crime, out of their script. Shells.

(Something small and brittle humming in the boundless, secure restrictions of their silhouettes.)

Tim moves his hips upwards so cotton can meet skin, so it can graze the bottom of Bruce’s chin until he forgets what is pulling him out of Tim’s body, out of the weekly presence on the top of sheets and carpets and air, so he can forget, forfeit what’s so loud that it silences everything else.

Tim will know soon. Will as soon as Bruce leans up under the hem of his shirt, the braces shaped out of his palms and knuckles delineating the width of his hips, sealing it against the room, into the space it takes and right then: an alarm sounds.

Tim’s consciousness jumps, selects, dissects; thinks thinks thinks – not crime, not phone calls, not trespass, not more than a buzz and it’s:

“A meeting,” he says; gasps through the losing of Bruce’s weight; without consent, the permission for his _mouthlungsteeth_ to do that, to like Bruce right now.

Bruce pushes a button, puts Tim’s shirt down; it falls over the reef of his jeans. 

Thick. It’s how Tim feels. His throat, wrists, the hollow spaces under his chest.

(The solution guiding his synapses.)

“You arranged a meeting for _today_?” and from the Brucie set of Bruce’s lips and the two suits that suddenly aren’t only backgrounds anymore, aren’t just pieces of this room hanged by their metallic and wooden spines, Tim supposes that: it’s a party. A full, hours long block of being a smile, of being a picture, of being a son of someone he was about to fuck, about to see honest, about to be like they’re supposed to be with.

(10 hours of Bruce and Tim and cheap shirts and luxury pajamas; hours of being out of words.)

“We will still be spending time together, Tim,” Bruce says, moves to zip and button Tim’s pants as if Tim’s a snotty, uncoordinated kid; a five year old that can’t get dressed without his Daddy’s hands ready to push the button through but Tim’s _not_ , wasn’t and it’s humiliating, that Bruce thinks he’s that easy to pacify, that it’s so easy to lull Tim Drake to sleep. (So easy to wake Tim Wayne up.)

He blocks Bruce’s hands, turns around to button his pants himself, to wear the face he was born into; to face what he kept hiding, kept putting into the pockets of his mind, kept erasing from the context of Bruce and him and their winded talks, the unused silences between touch.

“The only thing we would be _spending_ would be our energy. And not even together,” he states, fixes the depth of his pockets, the spaces he never fills. 

“Bruce Wayne _funded_ the program,” Bruce says, defends what he’s got left. “He needs to make an appearance.” Needs to woo a few girls. Spill a champagne or two. 

(Needs to be someone else.)

Tim shifts, adjusts his shirt, uselessly clenches the side of his jaw. “If you wanted, you could’ve called me on any day this week. But did you?”

He did. To remind Tim of the monthly check up, to ask for a report. To pass on a message from Alfred. 

(To hang up five minutes later.)

He did call.

“I’m going home. Have fun, Bruce,” Tim says, leaves.

They get smaller.

And their lives grow around them.


End file.
